Power distribution units have long been utilized to supply power to electronic equipment. A conventional power-distribution unit (PDU) is an assembly of multiple electrical “outlets” (also called “receptacles”) that receive electrical power from a source and distribute the electrical power via the outlets to one or more separate electronic equipment units having respective power cords plugged into respective outlets of the PDU. PDUs can also have power cords hard wired to a power source instead of, or in addition to, outlets. PDUs can be used in any of various applications and settings such as, for example, in or on electronic equipment racks, among other applications. A PDU located in a cabinet may be connected to other PDUs or to other devices such as environmental monitors, for example temperature and humidity sensors; fuse modules; communications modules; and the like. Such a PDU and any other PDUs and other devices to which it is connected are commonly enclosed within an equipment rack or equipment cabinet and collectively referred to as a Cabinet Power Distribution Unit (CDU).
Electronic equipment racks, such as standard RETMA racks, commonly comprise rectangular or box-shaped housings sometimes referred to as a cabinet or a rack and associated components for mounting equipment, associated communications cables, and associated power distribution cables. Electronic equipment is commonly mountable in such racks so that the various electronic devices are aligned vertically one on top of the other in the rack. Often, multiple such racks are oriented side-by-side, with each containing numerous electronic components and having substantial quantities of associated component wiring located both within and outside of the area occupied by the racks. Such racks commonly support equipment that is used in a computing network for an enterprise, referred to as an enterprise network.
Enterprise networks exist to support large world-wide organizations and depend on a combination of technologies, e.g., data communications, inter-networking equipment (frame relay controllers, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches, routers, integrated services digital network (ISDN) controllers, application servers), and network management application software. Such enterprise networks can be used to support a large company's branch offices or campuses throughout the world, and, as such, these networks have become mission critical to the functioning of such organizations. Masses of information are routinely expected to be exchanged, and such information exchanges are necessary to carry on the daily business of modern organizations. For example, some international banks have thousands of branch offices placed throughout Europe, Asia and North America that each critically depend on their ability to communicate banking transactions quickly and efficiently with one another and with their respective headquarters.
A typical enterprise network uses building blocks of router and frame relay network appliances mounted in equipment racks. Such equipment racks are distributed to remote point of presence (POP) locations in the particular network. Each equipment rack can include frame relay controllers, routers, ISDN controllers, servers and modems, etc., each of which are connected to one or more power sources. The value of POP equipment can range from $200,000 to $500,000, and the number of individual devices can exceed a thousand.
A relatively large number of equipment racks are located in one or more data centers that act as hubs for data communications for an enterprise. Conventional network management technologies provide relatively little information related to the electrical power consumption and/or status of data centers, various equipment racks within data centers, or of particular components associated with equipment racks. Energy consumption of data centers can be a source of significant costs for an enterprise, and increasing energy efficiency of data centers could provide a significant cost savings for an enterprise.